


Tempered; Not Tamed

by GreenKirtle



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Flashbacks, Gang Rape, HYDRA Trash Party, Injury, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Punishment, Torture, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-13 09:09:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4516095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenKirtle/pseuds/GreenKirtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>After they laid him out on the table, naked and with his metal arm hanging useless at his side, one of the techs had jabbed a needle into his thigh. He didn’t understand. It was against the natural order of things, and he knew the natural order of things like he knew how to strip a rifle and that two times two equaled four.</i>
</p><p>Injury in the line of duty was not an acceptable failure to Hydra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tempered; Not Tamed

**Author's Note:**

> Original prompt:
> 
> Bucky's been holding it together pretty well, but then something happens -- he breaks his foot, he gets a cold, whatever. It's temporary, it's not a big deal, but until he heals up he'll have to deal with it continuously. The problem is that this is a MAJOR trigger for him. It turns out that the last time he sustained this kind of injury, Hydra punished him by forcing him to submit to a lengthy, brutal gang rape. Cue Bucky, Steve, & co coping with Bucky slowly breaking down under the pressure of being relentlessly triggered, and there's absolutely nothing anyone can do to remove the trigger -- they just have to wait until the injury heals on its own time.
> 
> \+ Bucky's been doing such a good job of faking psychological togetherness, this does a lot to reveal to Steve how deep his wounds really run  
> ++ everyone had kinda figured he'd been tortured, but no one knew about his history of rape until this incident pretty much wrote it across the sky  
> +++ Bucky had been determined to go to his grave without Steve/the Cap crew/the Avengers/ANYONE realizing rape was a significant feature of his time with Hydra; mostly because of his private shame, but also partially because he's aware that his reputation reflects on Steve. Bucky believes that maybe Steve can scrape by if he's just known as being friends with Hydra's assassin, but it would bring too great a dishonor to him if his name were associated with Hydra's whore
> 
> http://hydratrashmeme.dreamwidth.org/587.html?thread=862539#cmt862539
> 
> Since this was started before the movie came out it is AoU noncompliant.

Dr Gardner is okay in Bucky’s book because she’s old enough that she calls him Mr Barnes and doesn’t get in his space all the time, not like the younger ones who all want to call him by his first name and get too close, physically and personally. None of this is helping now, though.

“A normal person would have lost the leg, if they even survived at all. Fortunately you should be fine in a few weeks, but you need to stay off of it. A week of rest at least. Oh, don’t look so glum,” she adds gently. “I know how hard you people work. You deserve some time off, even if it is like this. Catch up on your reading, watch some bad TV, breathe a little.”

Bucky finally manages to grind out “Right.” He hardly feels like he can breathe at all.

Because Steve is still in post-mission debrief, Clint is there for him in the waiting room. Dr Gardner accedes that Bucky may use crutches since he’s only going ten floors up, and Bucky has never been so thankful to live in this ridiculous department store of a building before. Clint takes the two discharge summaries (”I’d be worried about you if you lived alone,” Dr Gardner says with a smile, “But I’m sure Captain Rogers will take good care of you,” and Christ, Bucky is going to be _sick_ ) and the bag of prescriptions and helps Bucky up out of the wheelchair. The nurse gives them a few words of parting advice but Bucky doesn’t hear any of them. He’s too focused on figuring out how to walk with the crutches before he falls over and they put him in the wheelchair again, before they put him in the wheelchair and strap him down and pull his – no. Bucky shuts his eyes, feels the swing-step rhythm that’s walking now, breathes.

Clint keeps up a steady stream of chatter, light-hearted but not loud, all the way to the elevator. He also keeps his hand on Bucky’s elbow, equally light and steady, and Bucky wants nothing more than to shove it off. It’s as if he can smell it, can taste it in the back of his throat, wet concrete and sweat and –

“So there I was,” Clint continues, pressing his hand to the scanner on the express, Avengers-only elevator, “Looking at a whole week of a broken ankle without even an Advil, not to mention Natasha’s cooking.”

“Sounds tough,” Bucky mutters, just to show he’s paying attention.

“And the worst part was the boredom. Sometimes you could pick up a Finnish radio station, but that’s not too interesting if you don’t speak Finnish. Here we go, don’t get them caught in the gap, I know I would.”

Clint falls silent when they’re in the elevator, both staring at the floor numbers ticking up. Bucky wills them to go faster so that he can get out, get out of this goddamn metal box with nowhere to go, no room to swing when –

“You okay, man?” Clint asks quietly half-way up.

“Yeah,” Bucky says quickly, “They shot me up with some kind of new painkiller, I guess it hit me pretty hard.”

Clint nods and goes back to looking at the floor indicator. Sometimes, Bucky thinks, it’s almost depressingly easy to pull the wool over people’s eyes. The painkillers wore off hours ago and he wouldn’t let them give him more. He couldn’t face the idea of being in this state and being even slower, more defenseless.

_Even now names and dates don’t come easily to him. It was long enough ago it was no surprise there were no women in the room, and that scientist was standing in the corner, the one with the sandy hair and the hollow cheeks. He had a clipboard and would periodically issue orders in an even voice to him, to the other men. He obeyed. They obeyed. It was the natural order of things._

Bucky and Steve share a floor, and usually it’s nice. Bucky likes not having to live by himself, to worry about all that space, likes having someone to talk to, now that he’s used to talking again, but most of all he likes Steve, not least of all because against all odds, Steve likes him. Bucky doesn’t have any illusions about suddenly turning into the same guy Steve remembers from way back when, but Steve doesn’t seem to care about that. He’ll take Bucky at his tersest and most moody, the days when what he really wants is to go down to the range and shoot until he hits the daily ammo limit. (Nobody knew there was one until he showed up, but of course there is, because it’s the future and everything is controlled by a goddamn robot). He’ll take the crap in Bucky’s files and the fact that Bucky nearly strangled him not once but four times, and an average of six questions per press conference about him for almost a year. Bucky doesn’t show up for those dog and pony shows, the possibility isn’t even raised. But he watches them later, sound off and closed captions on, and counts.

Bucky isn’t particularly impressed with the idea of Captain America – he’s served the USA and the USSR and as far as he can tell their means and their ends were about the same. But past all the ideologies and the costumes the truth on the ground is that Steve _does good_ , and Bucky gets to be a part of that. The satisfaction of hitting a target on a range has nothing on the satisfaction of hitting a target in the field, and neither of them is as good as knowing, as deeply as he can know anything these days, that he did something right. He wants to help people now, and anything that keeps Steve looking at him like he’s allowed to do that, that keeps the world looking at Steve like he’s allowed to do that, is worth it.

Bucky never denies anything in his files, but he doesn’t go out of his way to flesh them out either. He spends most of his semi-mandated therapy sessions asking questions about how to live like a person. Some of them are serious, some of them are fake, and every once in a while he throws in a few memories just to make Dr Stewart feel like he’s not wasting his time. Dr Stewart tells Bucky he isn’t really the person who did those things, and one of these weeks Bucky is going to tell him to shut up. If that wasn’t him, then what about the person who braided little girls’ hair, who raised his arms at the crest of a fairground ride? If that wasn’t him, then can he be sure that this really is him now, that he won’t wake up tomorrow with another man sitting in front of him telling him what to believe about himself? He has to make the pieces fit, and he’ll put them together by himself if he has to.

He puts together the stuff that never made it into a file. It filters up bit by bit. In the very beginning he doesn’t understand, and then he does. He pulled triggers and cut throats willingly, it’s no surprise that he spread his legs willingly too. But there was never a feeling in the ordinary memories like there is on those ones. They told him he liked it and they must have been right. Why else would he choose to touch himself the way they had late at night or in the shower? They could be gentle. He’d always wanted them to be gentle. Why else would he be so upset about the times when they weren’t? Bucky resolves to burn anything he has to to keep these things off the record. He knuckles down and deals. He has a feeling this has been the way he’s always been.

Usually, sharing a floor with Steve is nice, but when the elevator doors open Bucky wishes he lived alone, he lived in another city, he lived on the moon.

_It was dry and rough until it wasn’t. When the fourth man pulled out he raised his head and stared down past his arm, his bent knee, his half-hard cock to where the captain was standing. He doesn’t know the man’s name now, but he did then. They been the cogs that ensured the infiltration team would work as a seamless whole. Neither of them had had to check to know that the other would have his six. The captain might have even been one of the ones to hold him on the medevac helicopter._

_“Countermand the order,” he gasped. “You’re in the chain of command, you can countermand the order.”_

_The captain walked forward to lean conversationally close to him._

_“You got careless,” he said softly, “And now you’re useless for the next week. I’m in the chain of command, and now it’s my job to make sure you remember what happens when things get out of order.”_

_The captain’s fingers closed around his throat, pressing on the veins instead of the airway. It was so simple, he thought, a woman could do it, a child could do it. After a while even he would be seeing spots. The fifth man pushed in. He lost the timeline after that._

Bucky hardly gets over the threshold of the elevator before Steve’s head pops out of the kitchen door. His expression of badly-covered relief is almost painful to see. He starts forward as if to hug Bucky but then takes in the crutches and – thank God – stops. Instead he tries to take Bucky’s elbow and lead him into the kitchen. He’s frying eggs and bacon which he promises will be enough for Bucky and Clint too, if he wants to stay. Biting his lip, Bucky manages to avoid either of them getting too close and sit down on the side of the kitchen table with only one chair. Usually the whole floor seems huge – Bucky remembers some time early on snarling “Jesus, you could raise a family in that living room alone” – but now the whole space feels claustrophobic. Maybe, he tells himself, he’d feel like this anyway. It had been a long, hard fight with a lot of damage – mostly buildings, he hopes, like the one whose rubble had pinned him down, but even if the casualty count was low it was still bad enough.

Steve looks over his shoulder from where he’s mixing eggs and milk together and asks “You okay over there, Buck?”

Bucky twitches his mouth up in a smile. “I’m just a little groggy from whatever they gave me.”

Steve laughs something about how he understands, any drug that can touch him has to be enough to fell a horse. Bucky doesn’t really hear it.

_After they laid him out on the table, naked and with his metal arm hanging useless at his side, one of the techs had jabbed a needle into his thigh. He didn’t understand. It was against the natural order of things, and he knew the natural order of things like he knew how to strip a rifle and that two times two equaled four._

Bucky does all right for a while. He eats his food, drinks water after every bite to get it down, chips into the conversation from time to time. Everyone around the table is quieter than usual, which works for him, at least until he starts thinking about his clothes. He doesn’t mean to, but suddenly he can’t stop. He’s still wearing the top half of his suit, but they cut the bottom off him in medical to get to his leg. They gave him a pair of light blue drawstring pants with GOVERNMENT PROPERTY stamped on them and a slit cut up the right leg to accommodate his cast, and suddenly he can't stop thinking about how flimsy they seem, how easy it would be for anyone to just put him up on the table and –

Bucky manages to get on his feet without knocking the chair over, but the dishes do clatter when his hands slam down on the table.

"I'm tired," he says, not caring about whether or not his voice sounds convincing. "I'm going to go to bed."

Steve tries to help him, brings over the crutches and moves his chair back, and Bucky can't get too angry at him, because the only reason he's doing it is that Bucky didn't move fast enough. He mumbles a lot of "Don't worry about it," and "I'll be fine, just need some rest," until he's finally, finally out in the hall alone.

Bucky doesn't bother turning on the light in his bedroom. He levers himself up onto the bed and lies on his back. Under his clothes he's covered with sweat and grit, and he smells of body odor, soot, and disinfectant. Normally he'd wash off first thing after a mission. He hates being dirty now that he has a choice. But right now he doesn't want to get up, and anyway, he can't think about how to handle the cast. He certainly can't remember Hydra bothering to bathe him, last time.

Bucky reaches for the prescription bottle on his bedside table. As far as Steve knows, they're just for sleep. The idea of taking so many that he could simply pass out, could spend the next day in a haze and think of nothing, is suddenly very tempting. But he taps out the usual one and a half pills into his palm, washes them down with water from the glass, and falls back, opening his jacket with one hand. It’s his right leg that’s been crushed the same as last time, but the cast is a normal weight, he can shift around to get comfortable if he wants. (”If it doesn’t heal right,” Bucky remembers a doctor saying over the operating table, “We can always stick some reinforcements in, what do a few extra pins matter in him.”) The idea feels useless, though, so he stares up at the ceiling and waits for unconsciousness to take him.

_One of the things Bucky remembers most is the cigarette burns. Not the ones on his foot but the ones on his hip. His punishment had taken a long time. The men stood around talking and smoking while they took a break or waited for their turn. There was an ever-changing constellation on his hip, but the blaze of a cigarette being stubbed out on him would always be followed by anticipatory dread. It was right above the crease of his leg, so every time one of the men clenched a hand down on it or bent his leg back for better access, the scab would break or tear away. He healed fast, of course, so it was never as bad as it would have been for a normal person. But somehow the never-ending sting of dirty skin on an open wound or a burning cigarette against half-healed flesh was more memorable than any individual torture from that night._

 

Waking up is like floating in molasses, soft and sticky and warm. It takes him a minute to remember the source of the sick weight in his stomach. Then it comes back to him, along with the pain and stiffness in his leg, and Bucky rolls over and presses his face into the pillow, as if that will help anything.

He strips off the remains of his uniform and scrubs off awkwardly over the sink with a damp washcloth. He has a vague memory of doing this somewhere else, stripped to the waist and standing over a wash basin because hauling out the tub and heating water would take too damn long this early or this late. The water’s warmer this time, his hair’s longer, and he pulls one of those buttonless knit shirts over his head afterwards. The line of his own collarbone in the mirror catches his eye, and Bucky stares at it for a moment before making himself turn away. He pulls on a sweater as well just to have another layer over him.

As blocky and cumbersome as the cast is, it isn’t too difficult to get the hang of moving around with now that he has some time alone. Bucky knocks the pillows from the couch onto the floor and does figure eights around them until he can weave and pivot without losing speed or balance. It’s almost enough to distract him, almost fun, until he stops moving.

Usually when he feels like this he gets out, starts walking and doesn’t stop. He plays a shell game with money, P.O. boxes and fake IDs. Mostly, he uses it to maintain an alias with a library card so he can use the Internet with reasonable surety that no one is paying attention to _him_. Sure, it’s all monitored, by the library, by the government, but there’s no reason for them to give Brian Grahame’s Internet habits special scrutiny, at least as long as he’s careful. But he’s also making himself known to the right people, laying the groundwork for when he needs a really big favor with no questions, or the half-dreaded, half-anticipated day when he needs to disappear and know that no one, not SHIELD, not Stark Industries, not Steve will find him.

He could go out. He probably should go out. A cast and crutches are awkward, but he’s not bedridden. But the thought of being outside, exposed and looking like prey, is frightening. He’s supposed to stay off his feet anyway.

Bucky has a deal with Stark’s creepy robot. It never talks to him directly unless there’s an emergency. This morning he woke up to a message informing him that he has a debriefing scheduled at 11. It included a personnel file with headshot. Mimi Defalco has a band of freckles over her broad cheeks and thick, curly hair. He thinks about the best way to receive Agent Deflaco. The living room puts plenty of space between them, but both the chairs and the couch give enough that it could be hard to stand in a hurry. The kitchen chairs are hard, but he remembers how claustrophobic the table felt last night. But that was with two other big, broad-shouldered men. He wonders suddenly what agent Defalco’s height and weight is. Stark’s creepy robot would probably tell him if he asks. It knows everything. It’s that thought that makes him decide not to.

_They had pushed him further up the table so that the man between his legs had to kneel up there on the metal, so that his head tipped back and another could take his mouth. There were two hands digging into the cheeks of his ass, holding him up off the table. There was a hand in his hair and a hand on his throat, which mean the hand on his cock –_

_A sixth hand pinched his nostrils shut. “When I come,” the man using his mouth gritted out, “You’re going to swallow everything I give you. Don’t waste a drop, or we’ll make sure you’ll be really sorry.”_

Agent Defalco turns out to be average height, well-built but wearing a badly-fitting suit that hides it. Bucky’s first thought before he presses the button that opens the elevator doors is that she looks very _young_ , and his second is that by some estimates he might only be a few years older. When she sees him in the hallway she apologizes for him having to get up for her. They sit in the kitchen.

Defalco puts a small recorder on the table, pulls out a StarkPad, and does the usual preamble – this won't take long, if you could just tell me in your own words what happened.

He starts out when they got the alert. It was nothing too unusual, some inventor named Dr Fust had invented a little too much, gotten delusions of grander, and decided Manhattan would be his. Tony had made a comment about these inventors all turning out to be nutcases, and Bucky had suggested this was the pot calling the kettle. He still remembers Steve's badly-stifled laugh behind them.

The issue wasn't Dr Fust's jetpack -- jetpack! Even Bucky thought this was a little cheesy – or the laser gun, it was the sophisticated computer virus and army of spider robots with a hive mind. JARVIS would periodically give a garbled "Excuse me, sir," and go off-line to fight the virus in his system. The spider-bots swarmed out of what seemed like nowhere en masse, and if one of them got a bead on you, an entire army was sure to follow. With Thor back in Asgard and Sam still in DC – "I told you," Tony had shouted the third time he had to swoop down and grab someone off the ground in order to shake off the spider-bots crawling up their legs, "I _told_ you you should’ve pulled rank on him and made him move up here, Cap," – they were mostly grounded, and the best way to deal with the bots was to have the Hulk smash an oncoming wave of them and then Natasha, Clint, and Bucky to pick off the rest.

At least until the bots switched tactics fro swarming the Avengers to chewing through the support beams of nearby buildings.

The buildings were low-rise for New York, but they were tall enough. Bucky remembers Steve's face going white under his cowl before he roared "Clear those buildings!” And after that it was one endless reel of shoving through shops and offices and people’s apartments, shoving his left hand through the wall, and trying to tear spider-bots one-by-one off the uprights while Natasha and Clint pounded on doors yelling for everybody to get out. When JARVIS was online he would give the building’s layout. When he wasn’t, Bucky had to guess.

One of the buildings had been a hotel. The marquee still stretched out over the sidewalk. One of the spider-bots had chewed through the support struts, but there was a curly-haired teenager standing under it, too scared or dumb or something to move. Bucky swore under his breath and ran. He managed to grab the kid and half drag him, half shove him out from under it, but –

“I was careless,” Bucky says, because it’s the truth. “There was some debris in the street. I think it was glass. I put my foot right on it and went down. Before I could get up, the marquee fell.”

He remembers shoving himself up on his elbows and snapping “Keep going, I’ll be fine,” at Natasha’s upside-down face. He had lain there and listened to the sound of the battle moving farther away. Bucky had lain there looking up at the sky and tried to breathe steadily, telling himself it was better this time, it was just his leg. Then the first spider-bot showed up. He smashed it quickly, but thanks to the hive-mind they kept coming. Mostly in twos and threes, but always more.

“It took a long time.”

Agent Defalco looked like she was waiting for something more, so Bucky tired, “The medics were very gentle when they got me out.” It was true.

 

_Eventually his cock was stiff, leaving west smears on the planes of his stomach, and by the time a man who ordered him to “Moan for it, I don’t want to fuck a corpse” got his turn, he didn’t have to pretend too hard._

_“That’s right, you want me to make this good for you?”_

_Lying is forbidden. “Yes.”_

_“Well then you gotta ask for what you want. Come on, sweetheart, you know what you want, don’t you?”_

_“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” came a voice from off the side, “Of course he doesn’t.”_

_So the man taught him what he liked and taught him how to beg. And he did like it – the hand on his cock that was gentle in its firmness, the way the man could roll his hips and make his vision go white. Their bodies were moving together now. He bucked his pelvis up to meet the man’s thrusts, shuddered when the man drove into him at just the right angle. Sometimes a gasp or a moan interrupted the stream of words coming from his mouth, but he tried to bite them back. He tried to do as he had been told._

_“Please fuck me, sir, please give me your cock, I – ahh! – I want it so much. Please fuck me harder, sir, I’ll make it good for you, I want you to fill me up again, please, please sir, touch my cock, yes, I like it. Please sir, touch my cock. Please use me, I want you, please fuck me harder.” Then, “Please stop.”_

_For a moment as the man pulled away he thought it had worked. Then the blindfold was pulled over his eyes. They must have had it ready. He tried shaking his head from side to side, but the captain’s voice snapped, “Stay still.” Fingers squeezed on the hinges of his jaw, forcing his mouth open. He wanted to protest. He had obeyed. He had asked for what he wanted. When dirty fingers shoved something small and metallic-tasting against his tongue, he could almost hear his own voice, sometime else and far away, reciting, “Attach one electrode to the nipples, genitals, or tongue, and with the other –”_

_It came down on the half-healed sole of his foot._

_He started screaming after the second shock. Each one ripped through him, excruciating and inescapable. His back arched up, his useless limbs felt like they were being broken all over again, his head cracked against the metal. Once he got a shock to the genitals, but the captain snapped, “Go easy on that. If you do it too much he’ll piss himself, and then I’m not gonna get it up again for the rest of the night.” They alternated between his left foot, his upper thighs, his belly, his nipples. The fact that they had fewer sites to work with should have been a comfort. It wasn’t._

_In the moments between shocks he could feel the men’s eyes on him. The room was quiet now, no one talking or moving around in the background. He wondered how close they were standing. Maybe they were crowded around the table looking down at him. He could hear their breathing along with his own wet gasps and the footsteps of whoever was holding the second electrode._

_When it touched the fingers of his metal hand the shock left his heart beating so wildly he could feel it in his throat, in his head. For a moment he was angry – he would never run that kind of current through someone’s left side, not unless he wanted to risk killing them. But then he realized he’d only ever worked on humans. Maybe he would have done the same thing, working on someone like himself._

_The scientist called a stop to it eventually. He was worried about muscle contractions and healing bones. Everything resumed the way it had been before, but they kept the blindfold on._

_When the first man was balls-deep in him, he joked to someone else that they ought to be sorry they hadn’t waited, it felt as good as new. He was right. It felt like the first time all over again._

Bucky justifies going to the living room after his debrief because it and his bedroom and equidistant from the kitchen. He can’t stand the idea of lying in bed feeling like he’s waiting for something. Besides, the living room has two viable exits, unlike his room where the second door dead-ends in the en suite, and there’s no practical difference between lying down with his leg up on a mattress or a couch. The couch gives him a view of the city, taller than he remembers it, and the television. The television gives him improbably-glamorous teenagers doing salacious things. He turns the screen brightness down but keeps the volume where it is.

The salacious teenagers don’t really keep his attention, mostly because his eyes keep straying to the photograph mounted on the wall. It was Steve and and elderly woman. Dorothy Halloran had lived int heir neighborhood when they were kids. “You remember Dot, don’t you?” Steve had asked “Red hair, tall and skinny? You two went up against each other in that poetry reciting contest when you were twelve and she beat the pants off you with Ulysses.” Bucky supposed he might, but he didn’t want to say yes in case he was wrong. He did remember Casabianca, though, sometimes.

Dorothy had written to Steve when he was unfrozen and she had become one of his first friends in the modern world. When Steve had learned that the little branch library where she had worked for most of her life was now underfunded and falling into disrepair, he decided to do something about it.

“Don’t worry, the city will do whatever you want as long as you sign it _Sincerely, Captain America_ ,” Tony had said. “If they don’t have the money the Foundation will bankroll it.”

But Steve had labored on the letter for half a week. He would read Bucky fragments and ask if he thought they sounded good enough. “She’s a good person, and she worked hard to make things better for other people,” Steve had said one night as he started another draft. “I just want to do something nice for her.” The result was a renovation of the branch library and the Dorothy Halloran Fund, which would buy materials and fund educational programs in libraries around the city.

The re-opening of the renovated building had been a big event. Steve made some brief remarks before giving the microphone to Dorothy. The Mayor made some much longer remarks. Then there was a party.

Steve had tried to get Bucky to come along. “I think Dot’d really like for you to be there, Bucky. She always asks how you are.” But he stayed home, set up and obstacle course in the gym and ran it until his muscles ached and even Natasha told him to pack it in.

In the photograph, Steve and Dorothy are coming out of the library doors. She’s leaning on his arm and they have their heads together as if they’ve just been talking. They’re both smiling. When Bucky looks at it he imagines himself standing in the doorway behind them like some kind of malevolent ghost.

_“You want this to be over? You want to prove how sorry you are?”_

_He nodded, and when no response came, managed “Yes, sir.”_

_A hand pressed down on his stomach and something cold and hard slid slowly into him. “Get yourself off on this and that will be the end of things.”_

_From the thickness of the object he guessed it was one of the stun batons. The angle was wrong and the hand on his stomach kept him from getting much leverage but he tried rocking his hips desperately. It was always going to be uncomfortable, but if he dug his good heel into the table and rolled his body just the right way he could get it to just the pleasurable side of pain, especially as the baton started to warm to his body. He was almost half-hard, sweat pricking his skin when he felt the baton being withdrawn. He whined involuntarily and started to beg, “No, please, I almost have it, let me try just a little longer –”_

_“Sorry, doll.” The hand on his stomach gave him a slap. “Time’s up.”_

_Something hot started to well up in his throat and eyes, and he might really have humiliated himself if the scientist hadn’t said, “All right, that’s enough, everybody out.” There was grumbling, shuffling, then quiet._

_A gloved hand pushed the hair off his face, then coaxed his head up to undo the blindfold. When it was pulled away, the scientist was leaning over him. He had gray in his hair and heard and behind his glasses his eyes were bright green. The scientist brushed one hand down his cheek to cup his jaw and press it open gently. The latex was soft against his skin and he felt a sudden urge to turn into the man’s palm._

_The scientist inserted fingers into his mouth and began to probe. He could taste the powder as they checked over his tongue, around his teeth, pressed against the inside of his cheeks. Once the scientist reached so far back that he nearly gagged, but he steadied his breathing and bore through it. When the scientist withdrew his fingers, he looked around. The room was empty. With no windows there was no way to tell how much time had passed. The scientist was scribbling on his clipboard, flipping the pages to check something._

_He drew a breath. “Permission to stand down, sir?”_

_“Not granted.” The scientist didn’t look up from his notes._

_The examination was thorough. He had to rotate his neck, his uninjured leg, have his abdomen palpated, try to thrust his hips up while the scientist pressed down again and again. The scientist pressed his legs apart and examined his hole, first with his fingers, then with a penlight. Finally, the scientist ordered him to look up. “Don’t take your eyes off the ceiling.”_

_The scientist’s fingers slid easily into him, but what followed was something shockingly cold. It started to stretch him slowly but without filling him, and something about that sensation made him start to panic. He tried to sit up, to get away, but the scientist smacked him on the side and barked, “Stay still!”_

_He lay back, and it_ kept going _. Eventually something clicked and the scientist muttered, “And full dilation,” sounding pleased. He could feel the air of the room inside him, the sudden cooling of the come the men had left there. His thighs and asshole ached. He couldn’t get his breath under control, and the worst thing was that something hot and strange was starting to pool low in his belly. The scientist slipped two gloved fingers inside him and reached up and in to the same spot the baton hadn’t quite reached. His whole body shuddered at it. The scientist didn’t let up, and eventually he was gasping and making desperate, abortive little thrusts into the air to try to relieve his cock. The scientist would use his other hand to fondle his testicles or twist his nipples. One particularly hard thrust of the fingers inside him combined with an un-gentle press against his balls made something break inside him, and he let out a sob._

_He was like that, wide open, erect, and crying when the men came back. They brought the electrodes with them._

 

Bucky must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knows it's half-dark in the living room and Steve is announcing his presence by rapping his knuckles on the doorframe. Bucky has to twist awkwardly to see him, because he was a fucking idiot who lay down facing the window instead of the door.

Steve looks tired. He's already undone his jacket and tie, and is in the process of undoing the top buttons of his shirt. Still, he smiles when he says, "You had a nice afternoon?" so there's no way Bucky can't do the same for him.

"Can't complain"

"Yeah? How was –" Steve leans forward to get a better look at the TV screen just as Bucky slams the remote's power button, which makes him laugh. "Hey, no fair, I don't get to rot my brain with that stuff too?"

"It was just background noise," Bucky mutters. "I had my debrief," he adds. "Then I mostly just slept."

Bucky gets himself turned around on the couch so that he can see into the kitchen. It gives him a view of Steve’s back as he stands at the counter chopping root vegetables. The steady noise of the knife on the cutting board is surprisingly comforting. Steve is quiet for a while, then he bursts out with,

“That Fust guy – there’s some sick people out there and he’s one of them. I stood there and watched him look his interrogator in the eye and brag about what he did. How he figured out he wasn’t going to beat us, so he decided he’d hurt as many people as he could in the meantime. 'I made sure you'd remember me,' he said. And the worst thing is that he got what he wanted." The chopping stops and after a pause Steve says, "I went to see the victims. And – their families. And then,” the _thwack, thwack, thwack_ picks up apace, “It turns out SHIELD’s idea of a community meeting was telling a bunch of bankers that New York is still safe for business. And I understand that people are worried, they want to know that their families will be safe. Bankers just as much as anyone else. But just between you and me, sometimes I wonder if it would really be so bad if some of them left. Maybe the city would be a little poorer, but we’d make do just like we always have, and maybe it would be a city that real people could live again. I dunno, Bucky, sometimes I look around and I wonder what would happen to a couple of kids like us if we were growing up today and I just get so – _sweet bleeding Jesus_!”

“What’s wrong?” Bucky demands, one hand already on the back of the couch to get himself up. He can see Steve standing with his hands on the counter, shoulders tensed almost up to his ears.

“It’s nothing,” Steve says hurriedly. “I put the knife through the cutting board is all. Don’t worry about it, I’ll just get this cleaned up. Get another cutting board. It’ll be fine.”

Steve is quiet after that. He doesn’t even do his usual talk about the food – I found this, we’re trying that. It’s not that Bucky can’t cook, but all he really wants is something hot and edible. Steve’s the one who really cares. Between the two of them they go through a lot of food. It’s one of the things he likes most about living together. He never needs to feel ashamed for needing so much, because Steve needs too.

One of the movies from Steve’s seemingly-endless list is about to show on some TV station. Bucky gathers Steve’s habit of watching things when the TV airs them instead of getting them from the robot, because there had been an everyone-vs-Steve argument about it that lasted all the way across Texas.

(”Seriously,” Tony had said, throwing up his hands, “You ought to be glad you missed the era of relying on the networks to watch your movies! On-demand is one of the best things about the future, take it from me.”

“Besides,” Bruce chimed in, “They cut it up to squeeze in the commercials.”

Natasha nodded. “And you have to wait forever for something good to show up.”

“Though in fairness to the Captain,” said Thor, “The quality of your streaming films is not always the best. I hope I offend no one, but Earth has produced many works of culture finer than Can’t Stop the Music.”

“Most of Earth agrees with you on that one,” Agent Hill called back from the Quinjet’s cockpit.

“It’s not that I disagree with any of you,” was Steve’s reply. “But I still don’t think you should watch a movie sitting all by yourself. At least this way there’s other people watching it at the same time, even if they are,” he waved a hand vaguely, “Out there.”

Nobody was really persuaded by this, and it kept going from there. At one point Tony had tried to recruit Bucky to his cause – “All right, I understand you have some sort of weird thing about the collective experience going on, but what about what you’re subjecting poor Barnes over there to? The amount of high-volume capitalism in those commercials can’t be good for him.” Bucky was saved from the choice of either lying or siding against Steve by Natasha deadpanning, “Stark, you _are_ high-volume capitalism,” and the conversation moved on).

Bucky doesn’t say no, because Steve’s actually excited about this one and if they don’t have something else to do Steve will try to talk to him while they wait for the oven.

The film is set in that shadow time that Bucky almost but not quite remembers. At first he treats it like a puzzle, seeing what makes sense, what doesn't, what gaps he can fill in with guesses and which he can’t. It gives him something to think about. Steve, settled in a chair by the foot of the couch, has his concentrating face on, but his legs are stretched out easy and his shoulders relaxed. That’s good, Bucky tells himself. That’s good for both of them. But one of the actors makes him feel funny to look at. The longer it goes on the worse it gets, and he tries to look away but now it makes him feel funny to look at Steve, like whatever it is in him got out, is getting all over everything, and there’s nowhere he can look and nowhere he can go and –

_– and they never took him two at a time, but they wanted to. It was the logistics they couldn't work out, between the leg cast and both his arms useless and weighing him down. There was a long discussion about it. Someone would strike him across the face or the genitals if they thought he wasn't paying attention._

There are some fears that never go away. They used to test new restraint systems that way, used to strap him down and tip him back, cover his face and then the water, he always knew it was coming but he always struggled, and then there was the electric baton on his face or torso, because he broke the restraints or because he didn’t. He never knew where it would come down this time or why, but it came down and down and down and –

“Come on, come on, look at me – Bucky please, you’re scaring me here.”

Maybe it’s the desperation in Steve’s voice that brings him back. Maybe it’s the hand on his left arm. Either way, when Bucky comes back to himself his first instinct is to twitch away. Steve is kneeling next to the couch – _too close_ – with arm stretched out to the side. He wiggles his fingers, and when Bucky's eyes flick to them, relaxes a little. The TV is off.

"What just happened there?" he asks quietly, and Bucky has to think fast.

"I must have spaced out. Didn't eat all afternoon."

"I'll get you a protein bar." Steve's voice is flat, and as he walks to the kitchen Bucky watches his body language and thinks, _Bad lie, bad lie_.

The bar's label claims it's chocolate-flavored, but Bucky's pretty sure he ate better chocolate during the war. Or in the Soviet Union. Or both. Steve stands there to watch him eat it, so he has to, bit by crumbly bit. Steve asks if he wants something to drink and it takes him a moment of trying to calculate the right answer – no, don't show weakness? Yes, ask before you have to be told? – before he remembers there is no right answer, or at least there isn't supposed to be anymore. He mutters, "Sure," and it gets him a moment alone, so maybe it was the right answer after all. _Jesus, Barnes, get it together._

Steve sets the glass of water down on the coffee table and retreats to his chair. Bucky gets a few more mouthfuls of the protein bar down before he figures it's safe to ask if they can just turn the movie on again. Steve just waves a hand.

"I've already forgotten half the plot. Let's just leave it." There's a beat, then he says, "It's all right to talk about these things, you know."

"I told you, I was just tired. Hungry. Both. It's not an issue."

"Yeah, and yesterday you were groggy from the painkillers that they didn't give you," Steve snaps, then takes a breath. "I mean it's okay to be disturbed by what happened yesterday. What Fust did, going after civilians like that – I don't think I've ever had a fight like it. Everyone took it hard, everyone's trying to cope. Maybe some of us are doing better than others. I know Hydra didn't exactly care about collateral damage, but being upset that innocent people were hurt or killed isn't anything to be ashamed of. It doesn't make you weak, it makes you human. You don't have to talk to me about it, not if you don't want to. But you don't have to hide it either."

Bucky is ashamed that the first thing out of his mouth is "How did you know about the painkillers?"

"I read that discharge summary. Because you turned them down yesterday your doctor was worried you wouldn't take them at home if you needed them so she wrote an extra note about it."

He never should have let them print that damn thing out in the first place. But Steve's still looking at him full of earnestness and concern, so Bucky says, "I guess everything yesterday did get to me. It's just a lot to handle, you know? And everything's so different."

"I understand." Steve gives a little humorless laugh under his breath. "It's hard enough for me thinking about what he did, I can't imagine what it must be like –"

Mercifully, the oven timer goes off. Steve jabs the button, but halfway to the doorway he stops and turns. "You were invaluable yesterday, Bucky. I don't want to think how bad things would have been without you. You saved a lot of people. I hope knowing that helps, even a little."

With Steve safely out of the room Bucky lets his head fall back against the arm of the couch. Of course Steve thinks he's upset about civilian casualties. Because that's how Steve thinks and he assumes Bucky is just as good as him when the reality is that Bucky's been so self-absorbed he's hardly thought about it. Maybe Hydra made him like them in this way, too. But he's also selfish enough he wants Steve to keep believing he's that kind of man for as long as he can.

 

Dinner is winter vegetables and sausage with a neat pile of green salad on the side. Every time he looks up Steve has his eyes fixed on him sidewise, so Bucky keeps his eyes on his plate. It’s warm through the dish towel spread over his legs, but not hot enough to concentrate on. He can't seem to stop feeling like a bug on a card, and every time he looks down the bulky white cast is still there. He grabs a throw off the back of the couch and pulls it over himself. It doesn’t do much except remind him how flimsy his barriers are.

_"It's my job to take responsibility."_

But it isn't like that any more, Steve isn't like that. The fact that he gave Bucky a second chance without asking for repayment is proof, and so is the fact that Bucky’s even here, right now, and not in some sub-basement with –

The tines of his fork skid across the plate at a bad angle, and he cuts that thought off. It isn’t like that any more. He shouldn’t have even thought it.

Bucky nearly jumps when the robot’s voice issues from the ceiling.

“Pardon me, Captain Rogers, but your presence is urgently requested in the operations center.”

“What?” Steve’s already half on his feet, eyes flicking between Bucky and whatever a person looks at when they’re talking to the all-seeing robot that controls their home. “How urgently? Do I need my suit?”

“No, sir. But further questioning of Dr Fust and an investigation of his lab have uncovered further information which may need to be acted upon as soon as possible.”

Steve swears under his breath but doesn’t move. Indecisiveness isn’t like him, and neither is shirking duty. Bucky knows what he has to do.

“God’s sake, Steve, go do your job, I’ll be fine.” He waves a hand, making sure to keep his voice light.

“You’re sure you’re going to be okay?” Steve asks, folding his napkin slowly and not looking away. “And you’ll call if you need help?”

“No, I’m going to fall in the shower and die of pride.” Bucky rolls his eyes. “Of course I will. Now get going, and say hi to everyone for me.”

Half-way to the door Steve pauses to look over his shoulder. “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.” It’s half-hearted, and so is the salute Bucky throws in return, and they both know it.

 

It’s his tossed-off _Say hi to everyone_ that sticks in his head. _Everyone_ makes him think about too many bodies in a small space until he can almost feel the heat on him, smell the sweat. The idea of it makes him feel sick, makes him swear up and down he’ll never get in a room with them again, he’s –

He’s never gonna leave that room again, an animal in a trap of its own –

He’s never gonna be inside again, he’ll keep moving and –

Drag himself around like this, looking easy enough for any cheap hood to –

He’ll stay and wait, while his body is bracing for –

He has to get out of his head.

Bucky ends up collapsing in his desk chair instead of on the bed. He shouldn’t be this tired after a day of lying around doing nothing. It doesn’t make any sense. The fucking cast itches, and he hasn’t changed his –

Bucky shies away from that train of thought.

Maybe he should just stay in bed. He’ll burn some muscle not eating, but there’s water in the en suite, he can make it a week. He’s going to have to work his right leg up from atrophy anyway, he can squeeze in a little more training. he can’t have taken that long to recover last time. A week plus out of cryo had made him get erratic, memories filtering through his head like scraps of songs. He had overhead the scientists fretting about how to balance rigorous physical and mental reconditioning schedules. After that he doesn’t remember anything, so he supposes it worked.

But this time, he’ll have to work it out on his own. He remembers Dr Gardner’s joke the day before, and he doesn’t know what bad TV he likes, but he can look around. He’s sure he can find something distracting enough, something to make it not feel like –

_– lying in his cell, trying to pull the scratchy rip-proof blanket up over himself, tugging until it was taut where it was bolted to the wall and trying to wipe away –_

Bucky doesn’t bother getting under the covers when he lies down. He twists the prescription bottle open, taps out a few pills into his palm. He doesn’t bother counting – it’s not too many, and what difference will it make with his body anyway? They go down easy enough and he lies down, throws an arm over his face, and waits.

 

When Bucky wakes up there’s a briefing on his phone. Dr Fust’s interrogation and the examination of his laboratory and records indicated that equipment, highly valuable chemicals, and two of his lab assistants have gone missing. Faust’s interrogators think the assistants might have fueled his megalomaniacal tendencies first to distract him from whatever they were doing, then to distract the Avengers. Hawkeye and the Black Widow have been dispatched to track down the lab assistants, or at least the materials. Banner and Stark are trying to work out what they’re going to be used for. Steve is in ops, which he probably hasn’t left since last night. And Bucky is lying here, no good to anyone, wrapped up in his own head.

He could take himself down here. Even if there wasn’t anything he could _do_ in the field he could still make himself useful in ops. It’s mostly a room with some tables and enough holographic displays to light up a lot full of Christmas trees. Bucky’s good at good at waiting and watching. He has a better memory than a normal person and a lot of practice looking for things out of place, picking out patterns being subtly built or broken. Steve won’t mind of he sits off to the side.

He knows he won’t be able to do it.

The medication bottle is sitting right here. He could take a few and not think about any damn thing for as long as this takes.

Bucky texts the robot “Keep me updated” and goes to wash.

The man staring back at him from the mirror doesn't look good. He really should take a shower. There were instructions for it, but the idea of putting a bag over his leg, having his hands all over it and the feel of the plastic – Bucky leans over the sink until the crutches bump agains the counter, drags yesterday’s shirt over his head, and wets the washcloth. He scrubs his bare skin but can’t hold back a grimace when he thinks about reaching below his waistband. It’s like he hasn’t come anywhere in eight months, like he’s still living out of a backpack and waiting to get grabbed.

_He was staring up at one of the ceiling lights when the captain leaned over him, one hand coming down to grip his face, bring him to attention. "Give me a report." When he didn't respond, the captain pressed his cheek down against the metal tabletop. "Come on, don't you have something to say to me?" Suddenly, he knew the right answer._

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“For what?”_

_“I was careless. I let myself be hurt.” There had to be more he could have done. There had only been five of them. Five of them and a truck._

_“And?” When he struggled for the right answer, the captain explained as if he was was talking to a stupid child. “When you get up off this table, what do you get? What will we give you?”  
Again, he knew. “A second chance.”_

_“That’s right.” The captain ground the side of his face into the table. “We saved you when you would have died. We gave you that arm when you were broken. We give you work to do, a purpose, a place of honor and what do we ask for in return? Your loyalty. Your competence. That’s not_ too much _for you, is it?”_

_“No, I – I want to keep working. I won’t fail you like this again.”_

_"I think you've learned your lesson. You can show me the next time we're in the field." The captain's hand lightened, one thumb stroking over his cheekbone. "We bring order where it’s needed, punishment where it’s deserved, but Hydra isn’t cruel. Obedience is its own reward, but we give you even more than that."_

_And he had just lolled there and let it happen._

 Bucky tries bad TV. He really, really does. He watches mysteries with plots like dime novels and detectives who have more personal problems than the average superhero. The murderers kill like idiots and run like fools, and he does not think about the metal tables and smell of damp concrete and two-way mirrors in those interrogation rooms. He _doesn’t_.

He tries comedies. If he had a sense of humor before, he doesn’t now.

He tries dramas. Even though this one stars people who wear suits and evening dresses instead of uniforms it’s all about allegiance in the end. On the screen a woman drops below the frame. The man tips his head back, and they keep it tasteful but the sounds are all he can hear.

_The captain’s voice said, “Get going, you drew the short straw,” and he had just enough time to wonder when he’d drawn anything when his cock was enveloped by something so warm, wet, and tender that his whole body seized up at the shock of it. His head was already spinning, but now it felt as if he couldn’t breathe as well. It hurt, and at the same time it didn’t. He could feel his body waking to it, and it made him want more and less at the the same time. Eventually he was rocking his hops back and forth helplessly as his trunk shuddered, shoulders thrown back and spine arcing up. The press of his arm in the reinforced cast across his chest suddenly felt like too much, because his chest was heaving under the weight of it._

_The captain’s hand, which had kept his face pressed firmly against the table, let up. When he opened his eyes, the light was almost blinding. He blinked it away, and looked down his own body. The head between his legs was red-blond. One of the younger guys, he thought. He couldn’t remember what else he had done that night. The captain’s hand was in his hair again, yanking him to attention._

_“Tell me when you’re close.”_

_It wasn’t too long. His lower lip was already ragged but he bit down on it anyway to try to keep quiet. A little noise slipped out anyway when he let go to choke out, “N-now.”_

_The young guy pulled off and jerked him steadily through it. When the orgasm hit him he shuddered hard enough to slam his casted leg against the table._

_Someone on the side wolf-whistled, and another man yelled, “Hey Lewis, which one of your girlfriends’d you learn _that_ on?” Lewis flipped him off while scrambling to his feet. He wiped the other hand off on his pants and kept his head down to spit._

_Above him, the halogen lights seemed haloed. The captain dragged one hand through the mess on his belly and smeared it across his cheek, his mouth, the bridge of his nose. It was still warm. The captain shook his hand off and turned away without saying anything. He didn’t have to._

On the TV there’s a dinner party. The conversation would mean a lot to Bucky if he’d been paying any attention. If he could pay any attention. His room is enormous, and suddenly it’s too damn small.

In the kitchen, the fabric of his stupid government property pants snags on a bolt on his crutches as he shoves two slices of bread into the toaster. He drops into a chair and texts the robot so that he won’t just stare at the clock.

_Any news?_

_There have been no notable developments._

_Tell Steve to eat something,_ he sends back. On the stove, the clock ticks up another minute.

_They shot him up again before they got him up off the table. The medicine left him feeling hazy and tired. With his right arm in a cast and his left deactivated he had to be held upright, one man on either side. He hoped they wouldn't make him stand to attention. The scientist was angry about something, but it was hard for him to concentrate enough to make sense of the words._

_“No, I insist. You objected before, but he doesn’t need to look pretty anymore and it’s –”_

_When it seemed like no one was looking he darted his tongue out to catch some of his own come. It didn’t taste that much different from anyone else. He wondered what he had been expecting. Across the room, the captain rolled his eyes and threw up his hands. The scientist won. They taped a black garbage bag over his leg cast before pulling him up and onto his feet._

Bucky dumps peanut butter on his toast, gives it a shake of disgusting nutrition powder, and makes himself eat both pieces. He feels foggier than usual. He should probably go to bed, but the idea of going back there and lying, and _waiting_ –

He ends up at the big table in the living room, the one that looks out through the floor to ceiling windows onto Manhattan. Bucky lays his head on his forearms and looks out at the city. He feels like he’s fading in and out. Whenever he comes back to himself, the city is still there, shining under a dark gray day. Sometimes there’s rain falling outside, sometimes there isn’t. It’s quiet.

It’s quiet until Steve’s voice says, “You know, you’re going to get a crick in your neck, sleeping like that.”

He’s standing over the table in his uniform, backlit by the living room lights. As Bucky looks up the thought passes through his head that from here Steve could just press his face against the table and fix him.

He doesn’t. Instead he talks about how he figured they’d both be glad if he came back for lunch, two meals in a row from the canteen is enough for him, thanks. He asks if Bucky wouldn’t be more comfortable on the couch. Bucky allows that he probably would, but when he pushes his chair back and starts to stand the world shifts. He grabs for the table, the chair, anything to keep himself upright.

“Hey, woah, steady there.” Steve’s hands are on him. Steve’s right up against him, huge and hot and heavy and –

Bucky doesn’t realize what he’s done until Steve stumbles back, one hand against the side of his face. He falls back into the chair. His left hand, the one that he had hit out with, lands heavy on his thigh.

Steve says something that might be “What the hell –?”, but Bucky’s too busy stammering apologies that don’t get further than three words before the next one starts. But instead of leaving Steve grabs one of the other chairs with a clatter, sets it down so that they’re almost facing each other, and plants himself in it. His face is starting to redden where Bucky hit him and there’s a grim set to his mouth. He waits until Bucky shuts up and says flatly,

“Something’s wrong and you’re going to tell me what it is.”

“I’m –”

“If the next word out of your mouth is ‘fine,’ Bucky, then so help me God!” It hangs in the air between them until Steve settles back and folds his arms. “All right then. I can just wait here until you’re ready.”

No one can out wait Steve Rogers once he has his himself set on something, but Bucky at least hopes he can hold out until Steve gets a better idea. He’s gotten through worse interrogations, he tells himself. He stares out the window and pretends he doesn’t feel Steve’s eyes looking him up and down like if he tries hard enough he can find whatever he’s looking for. It’s quiet. Bucky tries to focus on his breathing, the rain on the windowpanes, his right fingernail scraping back and forth on the table. He almost has it when the robot’s voice breaks in.

“Captain, Mr Stark has ordered the Quinjet scrambled for takeoff.”

“Tell them to leave without me,” Steve barks without taking his eyes off of Bucky.

“But you have to!” It comes out before Bucky can think about it. Steve can’t stay behind because of him. That’s the only way he could make things _worse_.

“Damn it, whatever punk science project we’re dealing with here they can handle it without me. I’m not going to leave you.”

Suddenly, Bucky feels like everything’s sliding into place. He doesn’t get a choice. He doesn’t get to hide himself. Of course he doesn’t. It’s the only way things could be.

“If I tell you, will you promise to go?” He can feel Steve’s focus on him, the air in the room getting thick. “Swear on Sarah’s grave.”

“I swear.”

“And that you won’t tell anyone. Nobody.”

“Buck, I swear.” Steve raises his right hand, his voice grave.

Bucky takes a breath and shuts his eyes. His face is already burning. “Last time I screwed up like this, when I was with Hydra, they were pretty mad at me. They –” he cuts off, starts again. “My punishment was harsh. It was sexual.”

There’s a long silence. When he finally looks, Steve has his face buried in his hands.

“I never knew,” he says at last in a tone that sounds hollow even from behind his palms.

“You shouldn’t feel too bad. It wasn’t the only time I fucked them.”

“Jesus!” Steve’s voice and shoulders are shaking, either with anger or –

Or if it isn’t anger, Bucky has _really_ fucked up.

Shame presses down on him like a vice. He has to get out. “You promised you’d go if I told you.”

Steve takes too long to stand up. When he finally does, he drags the back of one hand across his eyes. “I’ll come back,” he says. He reaches for Bucky’s shoulder, but stops when he flinches. “I’ll come back,” he repeats a little stronger. It’s everything Bucky hoped for and was afraid of.

 

_It wasn’t like everyone lined up to stare. But as he was half marched, half dragged down the corridors heads poked out of doorways. People passed and didn’t look away. There was no way and nothing for him to hide, naked and dripping – even from his eyes and nose once the sting of his burned foot on the concrete got too much. No way for him to hide what he’d done and what he was. It was a relief when they reached his cell. The men laid him down and stripped off the garbage bag surprisingly gently and one of them even pulled the rip-proof blanket over him._

_Someone had taped a magazine page of a tropical island to the wall of his cell. Someone else had taped a pin-up girl over it, all big blond hair and smiles and breasts spilling over her arms. The pin-up was slightly smaller so that the edges of the first picture showed anyway. Both of them were too high to reach without a ladder. He wanted to wash off at the tap in the wall. It ran cold, but now the idea of cool water on his face, the electrical and cigarette burns, the places between his legs that felt raw and used. And then the water would soak into the casts and they would crumble and the bars would fall out and whoever was watching him would come in with a team and hold him down and – And –_

_And show him what he deserved._

_Part of him felt like had never stopped, like his body was still bracing for the next violation. The sensation of it and the fear felt heavier on his chest than either of his arms, so heavy he couldn’t breathe. His tongue still felt thick and heavy in his mouth from the electrodes. Sweat and semen was drying on his skin, itching and tacky. What happened tonight was not critical information, he told himself. The next wipe would take it away._

_Except, he remembered, it would be a long time until his next reconditioning session. He wouldn’t see the chair again until his arm and leg healed, and that might take –_

_He couldn’t breathe. There was air rushing in and out of his lungs, but he couldn’t breathe. What started out as gasping turned into noise, something guttural that forced itself up his throat and through his clenched teeth no matter what he tried, and once he started making it he couldn’t stop._

_He lay there for a long time making noises like an animal, eyes screwed shut. He knew people must be looking in through the reinforced window in the door. Some of them pounded on it to shut him up. He didn’t care. He couldn’t stop._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to HellsCabanaBoy for betaing!
> 
> The title comes from a song by the Delgados.
> 
> This fic is dedicated to Long-Winded Commenter. You were the wind beneath my wings.
> 
> (Edited 8/6 for line spacing – sorry!)


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